Gregorio Barrera was 48 and already in jail on a criminal trespassing charge when he was charged with killing his brother, Andres Barrera, 46, whose remains were found Sept. 25, 2016, buried in three feet of sand on Padre Island National Seashore in Kleberg County.

Judge Jefferson Moore, who presided over the case in the 186th state District Court, sent the jury home after the verdict was read. Court is in recess until Monday morning when the jury returns and the punishment phase will begin. Barrera faces up to life in prison.

During the trial, Kleberg County Sheriff’s Office investigators and the Nueces County medical examiner testified that the victim’s remains had been in the sand dunes for several weeks before being discovered.

Relatives testified the brothers would physically fight each other, and before Andres Barrera’s disappearance had argued over their home in San Antonio, in the 8700 block of Sage Brush, regarding a loan taken out on the property that was not paid.

Video shot by San Antonio crime scene investigators that was presented to the jury showed blood spatter on the walls of the home on the Northeast Side, on blades of a ceiling fan, the ceiling and a door there.

Gregorio Barrera told his brother before he went missing that he would drop assault charges against him if Andres Barrera gave him money or the home, prosecutors Kimberly Gonzalez and Ana Ochoa Nelson said.

Defense attorney Cornelius Cox argued that the state failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Gregorio Barrera killed his brother.

In their closing arguments, prosecutors told the jury that the evidence, though circumstantial, would show Gregorio Barrera killed his brother, and pointed to inconsistencies in his statements to police.

“He used his brother's credit card; he was in possession of his truck — he was driving it around. Then he said he saw his brother on the 12th, then the 11th, then the 10th. He can't keep his story straight,” Nelson said in her closing statement to the jury.

“The defendant signed a quit claim deed to (the house on) Sage Brush; he has been legally evicted and shouldn't be there at all,” Gonzalez added.

An FBI forensics expert testified Tuesday that DNA from a pair of sandy shoes found in the home on Sage Brush matched that of Gregorio Barrera.

Another FBI expert testified that granular material on a shovel taken from the home contained beach sand, but the location from where it came could not be established.

In his closing argument, Cox told the jury that the state's 200 exhibits and close to 40 witnesses had still not proven Gregorio Barrera killed Andres Barrera.

“We don't know how the blood got there (at the Sage Brush home),” he said, adding that the Nueces County medical examiner could not determine whether the deceased died on the beach or was taken there.

“There was not one witness that could testify that the deceased actually died at Sage Brush,” Cox told the jury.